


You're Knee Deep in Clover

by InfiniteCalm



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Dancing, Friendship, M/M, There's actually four povs, Three POVS, What is love, daisy's wedding, same idea, who knows - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:41:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22471981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfiniteCalm/pseuds/InfiniteCalm
Summary: People loving each other, to the best of their ability, which is sometimes enough, and sometimes not. Thomas tends to find himself on the outside, but it's all perspective.
Relationships: Phyllis Baxter/Joseph Molesley, Thomas Barrow & Phyllis Baxter, Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Comments: 15
Kudos: 164





	You're Knee Deep in Clover

**Author's Note:**

> Me again! Hello all! Guess who's been rereading bell hooks and listening to country!! Enjoy the latest da contribution! wish I could post at times that weren't 2 am!!   
> cw: alcohol use, brief panic episode
> 
> title from Anyone can be Somebody's fool, by Nanci Griffith (last verse!! relevant)

September 1927

Daisy-formerly-Mason-née-Robinson is happy. There is nothing in the whole country, indeed the whole world, that could hurt her today. The day outside is a scorcher. The heat promises to last well into the night. Mr Branson ( _call me Tom, honestly, Daisy, we’ve known each other half our lives_ ) had asked whether the wedding would be in the hall or what, or would they be having a dance in the barn at Yew Tree. The idea was so exciting that nothing else would do. She drafted in the local band, and swept the floor, placed the candles carefully on the ground so as they wouldn’t set fire to anything.

Andy’s not even the worse for the drink he’s taken, dazed but not taken leave of himself, and the fiddle is fast, and she’s not exactly sober, and she dances in her new wedding clothes (the only non-sensible shoes she’s ever had- she is so happy to be married and to be the type of woman that has a pair of non-sensible shoes) and she is not graceful because she does not care to be graceful. Her hair is falling down, and after the song ends she can hear someone say _she really does look beautiful, doesn’t she,_ and a reply comes, _more than most brides on their wedding day, even,_ and she knows it doesn’t really matter, but at that moment, when the drum begins a new beat and Andy grabs her by the waist in front of the entire barn full of their guests, she laughs out loud.

But the non-sensible shoes demand their due, and she’s overheating besides. She goes outside to sit down in the darkening evening, to be alone for a few seconds before someone asks her to organise something or say goodbye to someone to whom she doesn’t particularly want to talk.

Standing against one of the side walls of the barn, just out of the way of the revellers, she sees Thomas ( _not_ Mr Barrow here, because it’s her wedding day) looking down at something in his hands and smoking a cigarette. He doesn’t see her standing there. She watches him tap off the excess ash. It tickles her a little to see how careful he’s being. Its falling nowhere near the wooden structure, but he stamps it out anyway. He’s a city boy at heart, she thinks fondly, because she’s married today and is thinking fondly of all creatures. He doesn’t understand the farm at all, but he’s come up here in his nicest suit regardless.

“Hello, Thomas”, she says, and he starts, jumping an inch or two and swearing. “Oh, sorry!”

“Hello, Mrs Parker,” he smiles. “Having a good time?”

She wants to say, is this what you got up to in London, when you went down for seasons back then? This kind of dancing? And if you did, how could you bear to leave it?

“Oh, it’s all beautiful,” she says. “What’ve you got there? A letter?”

He folds it carefully and puts it in his pocket before walking towards her.

“Never you mind,” he says warmly.

“Been getting a lot of letters, these days,” she says, not treading lightly.

“You’ve been underworked, to notice things like that,” Thomas responds, and is about to leave without saying goodbye to anyone at the party, she can tell- it’s it in the way he’s turned his shoulders toward the main road.

“Give us a dance, then,” she says, grabbing a hold of his sleeve. “Like we used to, before.”

“With William on the piano,” he says.

“Go on!” she says, dragging him towards the bright glow of the barn. “Just one, and then we’ll let you go. You were ever so good.”

He stalls, touches his pocket lightly, and then lets a broad grin (he never smiles like that at work, and she nearly laughs to see it) spread over his face.

“Alright. Seeing as you are married.”

She cheers, hurries in. He’s not lost it- still an excellent dancer.

-

She successfully ignores the pain in her feet all night long, and they don’t clear the last of the guests out till dawn. She feels tired and sweaty and her hair has gone frizzy. Andy has spilled something down his shirt, and his jacket has a tear, and he looks absolutely spent. They stand in their own kitchen, next to the sink. It’s looking like it’s going to be another gorgeous day.

Phyllis has to laugh a little at the state of the crowd of them at the breakfast table the morning after the wedding: everyone looks exhausted, and the new kitchen maid has been up for hours already cooking a much bigger breakfast than usual. Phyllis makes sure to praise the food in earshot of the poor girl. Mrs Patmore cried all night long and she’s slumped now, picking morosely at her plate and sighing loudly, which is the only sound anyone’s making on purpose.

At least it’s going to be a nice day. The typical melancholy that comes with a hangover is much harder to deal with in the wind and rain. During an Indian summer like this one it’s going to be harder to succumb to the inevitable feelings of world-weariness and self-pity.

She, of course, can barely keep the smile off her face, and today of all days there will be no feeling sorry for herself, no cider-induced headaches or sore muscles. There’s a change in the atmosphere. Only she can feel it. The only person who notices anything’s different in her face is Thomas, who tilts his head and raises a shoulder. If she smiles, she’ll never stop, so she simply nods her head a little and then looks into her lap, and she feels in the air that he’s about to tease her, so it’s a hearty relief when the bell rings.

She told Joseph (a name she has always, always liked, even when she was a small girl) to come by after school finishes, and he was so frazzled that she doesn’t know if he even heard her or not. If he knows anything at all, Phyllis thinks, he’ll be here. If not, she might take herself up to see him. It is 1927, after all- times have changed.

Perhaps they haven’t changed that much. She doesn’t have the nerve, she thinks.

Thomas doesn’t get the opportunity to pull her aside until after luncheon, when he commandeers the kettle and makes them both tea, and then “remembers” he’s left something in the boot room.

“What’s got you so happy?” He asks. “Moseley finally ask, or have you come to your senses?”

“He did ask.” She says, and hides her smile with the teacup.

He leans against the work-table and crosses his ankles, looks at her from over his own mug, and gives her his half-serious waiting expression. They could do this all day, but she’s too excited to care much about the small games they play.

“I told him it was terribly rude to propose at someone else’s wedding, and to call round today.”

Thomas nearly spits out his tea, and when he swallows, she can tell he’s having trouble.

“You did what?” he asks, and then he laughs. “That’s brilliant!”

“I hope he doesn’t think I was telling him no. Do you think it was a little harsh?”

“Don’t be daft,” Thomas says. “The man’s been rejected enough to know every little nuance to the experience. He’s not stupid.”

She doesn’t comment on any of that. It’s almost complimentary.

“You’re right, he isn’t stupid,” she says.

He puts the cup down and goes to shake her hand. She pulls him into an embrace instead, and feels his tense shoulders relax slowly as the surprise dissipates.

“I’m very happy for you, Miss Baxter,” he says. “For as long as you’ll have that name, anyway.”

She lets him go. He’s getting a bit thin, she thinks, but his smiles aren’t forced. The letters that come to the breakfast table are very rarely read there, but he does take them up with a smile.

“Hello, Mr Moseley!” She hears, and Thomas smiles at her with those eyes of his which always seem a little sad, and pushes her along by her shoulder, letting his hand fall away as she walks forward.

-

October

The Lady Mary has left her son to run around the house and find something interesting to do, and now it’s time to go and meet his father in town, and he’s nowhere to be found. She supposes she must head down to the servant’s hall to look for him. Such a nuisance, that he’s found his friends down there, and not with the nannies. It would certainly be easier to go and get him… it would also be easier for her if Tom didn’t insist on having Sybbie live with him, which has George bored all by himself. Once school starts in a few years he won’t be so alternately underfoot and far away; she supposes she’ll miss all the trouble he causes, then. But that’s two years away.

He is sitting on the table in the servant’s hall, eating an apple and shyly looking at Mr Moseley, who is here for some reason, explaining something to him. Miss Baxter is mending an old bolero of Mary’s, showing George how she’s doing the stitching. They haven’t seen her in the doorway. Her son is carefully observing the woman’s work.

“Is Mr Barrow good at mending, too?” he asks, having finished a rather large bite of the apple. He’s obviously not listening to a word anyone’s saying.

“He is, rather,” Mrs Baxter says, after exchanging a fond glance with Mr Moseley. “He used to look after all of your grandfather’s clothes, when he went all the way to America.”

“I’d like to look after clothes,” her son says, and for a split second, Mary is a little sad for him. He’ll not get the chance even to learn how, most likely. “I’d like to be just like Mr Barrow when I’m big.”

“Is that because he spins you around, Master George?” Moseley asks.

“Really really fast! And he goes, he goes,” and then George makes the noise that Mr Barrow makes, presumably, “and he always makes sure Sybbie and Marigold are playing nicely. I always play nicely, but- oh, Mummy! Look at what Miss Baxter is doing, Mummy, she’s helping you with your jacket!”

If Mary offers a little silent thank you to Barrow for throwing George a little extra attention during his workday, that’s nobody’s business. Her son runs into her arms like he hasn’t seen her in a week. She nods at the standing staff, and sweeps out of the warm room.

-

June 1928

Second time in a year they’ve seen each other. Richard would rather have spread that out but he doesn’t have a choice.

When he thinks about it, it’s not… fantastic, that he can’t go to York for a day or two more than once every two years. This is why he does _not_ think about it, and why he has managed his time very carefully, that his parents will not feel cheated out of a longer visit, and he will get to spend most of the afternoon and some of the evening with Thomas Barrow, letter-writer extraordinaire.

Thomas is in a bit of a mopey humour at first, his hair sad and dishevelled, but he soon perks up. The clothes on his back take no time in ending up on the floor, and the curtains are drawn, and God, the man does know how to kiss. Richard holds on for dear life at a couple of junctures, and for some reason he is hearing his mother’s voice say _it’s not decent!!_ His mind jabs back triumphantly with the same sentence as Thomas carefully checks where his collar covers, before judiciously applying his teeth.

Focus, Richard, focus.

The way he moves- suddenly, all loose and mobile, and the way his voice is now (deeper, accent broad) and the way his eyes have gone from melancholic to bright; so quick that Richard can’t keep up, and then turning on his heel and not knowing anything, being three steps behind and, with Richard at least, unself-conscious about it.

His touch makes Richard _happy._ He has beautiful dreams where all he sees is Thomas’ beautiful hands, and he’ll wake up feeling refreshed. Dizzy.

He thinks the slip- it was too gentle to be anything as violent as a fall, he thinks, much too gradual… into whatever emotional state this is took place over the breakfast table, reading a letter from Downton, about the very eventful week they’d all had. It had been so funny and so obviously fond, you couldn’t help but admire the author.

Admire, he knows, is the wrong word.

“I love you, you know”, he says. Thomas shoots away. He clasps his hand over the scar on his right wrist and stares at him.

There is a long silence in the room, where Richard is trying very hard to keep it together and not storm out into the corridor and weep hysterically. Thomas’ breaths come fast.

“That’s not funny,” Thomas says. “It isn’t funny.”

Richard holds his hands up, and moves slowly towards Thomas. He wouldn’t be able to say anything if he tried; there’s a painful lump at the back of his throat. Thomas stays still. Richard reaches him, and clasps his hands in both of Thomas’. There is a relaxing of tensions.

“I’m not trying to be funny,” Richard says, at last. “I’m trying to say I love you.”

“I’m sorry,” Thomas says. “So sorry.”

“You’ve done nothing wrong.”

Thomas kisses just underneath his ear.

“Nobody’s said that to me in a long time,” he says, leaning his chin on Richard’s shoulder. In what sense, Richard wonders, and then, remembering the look of panic on Thomas’ face, he thinks, how long has it been?

They’re both down to underwear. Thomas’ arms are lovely. Richard runs his hand along the right one.

“Well. I didn’t mean to make such an awful scene about it,” he says. “Sorry. It’s just something I thought you should know.”

“Well. It’s- I feel- you, as well.” Thomas says, looking anywhere but Richard’s face, which is maybe understandable. Richard, with a confidence that no amount of life experience can knock, knows they’ll get there eventually.

And then they do their best to forget that it ever happened- if they had longer they might have had the discussion and be better off for it, but the fact is that they only have three or four hours before the train pulls out of the station, and it would be too much to ask that they do here something for which the telephone is perfectly adequate.

Thomas is lying in his arms, afterwards, staring at the far wall, and Richard thinks- _the people you described in that letter love you, Thomas Barrow_. But- if that’s any use to him, if they don’t or won’t show him that they do, what good is that? 

That’s not something that would help to say out loud. He kisses the top of Thomas’ soft hair instead, and strokes the bare skin on his stomach, puts his leg over Thomas’, so they’re all entangled together, and breathes into the curve of his shoulder.

There’ll be time for words later.

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: Thomas has a tiny panic attack at the end bit, but it's exceedingly mild.... oh, people drink at a wedding and feel the effects the next morning. Not in a way that is problematic for health.  
> come talk on tumblr, where i am [@meryton-etc](https://meryton-etc.tumblr.com/)


End file.
